Metropolis has a good column by Susan S. Szenasy about a new trend today: the new workplace brings employees closer to the products their companies make.
At first glance the corporate cultures, as well as the products, of Boeing and BMW seem worlds apart both geographically and philosophically. But the airplane colossus of Renton, Washington, and the car giant of Munich, Germany, are defining the new paradigm of work and working together. Their designers have given physical form to the mixed-use workplace where manufacturing types rub shoulders with managers, engineers, and clients.Connecting the people who engineer planes and those who make them seems like a no-brainer now that Boeing has found a way with the aid of their architects (...) This connectivity is also present on a somewhat smaller scale at BMW's new plant in Leipzig by superstar architect Zaha Hadid.
Why do i blog this? I like this idea of mixing diverse activities in the same building. It reminds Laboratory's Life (Latour and Woolger) where they explain how researchers' workplace offer this kind of mixity between places for experiments and places to writes papers + give talk and lectures.
Technorati Tags: architecture, place